It’s rare to see Mikel Arteta get as animated as he did when David Raya’s name came up in his pre-match press conference ahead of Saturday’s 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest.
The goalkeeper was one game away from his 100th Arsenal appearance, and after some back and forth about whether “pretty good” was an accurate description for a record of 41 clean sheets in his first 99 games, Arteta jokingly shouted, “It’s unbelievable! And I was hammered when I brought him.”
The second part of that answer was partly in jest, but there is a grain of truth there. Rewind two years and Arteta was under considerable pressure for signing Raya on loan when the public consensus was that he had a more than capable No 1 in Aaron Ramsdale. That pressure mounted in Raya’s early days in north London as he took time to settle, but the Spain international seemed at home by the end of his debut season.
His penalty shootout heroics against Porto in the 2023-24 season were his lift-off moment, but the consistency the 30-year-old has shown since then has been exceptional.
Two years, 100 games and 42 clean sheets on from signing, there is no doubt that Arteta made the right call.
At the time of Raya’s initial loan from Brentford, The Athletic crunched his Premier League numbers. In his first two seasons in the competition with Brentford, he ranked fourth out of 26 goalkeepers for goals prevented from non-penalty shots (5.12). Ramsdale ranked 13th with a rate of -0.7 by comparison, which wasn’t necessarily bad, just closer to the league average.
Raya’s early struggles come through in how his shot-stopping has trended over his time at Arsenal. He massively underperformed after a promising start to the 2023-24 season and then had a rapid upward trajectory at the end of that campaign.
That quick improvement has seen his rolling average for non-penalty goals prevented level out around the four goals mark since last season. Standout saves such as those against Wolves and Aston Villa early last season, or Manchester United and Leeds United early this season, will be the moments that make these numbers make sense, but they also come through elsewhere.
Raya has won the Premier League Golden Glove two seasons in a row, with 16 clean sheets in 2023-24 and 13 in 2024-25. He has also kept three clean sheets in four league games this season, with the weekend’s win over Forest meaning that Arsenal have won three successive home games in the league without conceding for the first time since a run of four matches in 2021.
In the Premier League, the 58 goals Raya has conceded from non-penalty shots have come from 58.2 xG, so he is conceding at a rate you would expect based on the quality of shots he has faced, but is still proving his worth.
Another aspect of Raya’s goalkeeping that stood out at Brentford was how he dealt with crosses. It was apparent that, despite being ‘just’ 6ft (182cm) tall, he was adept at claiming crosses. This took a while to shine through at Arsenal, as he made costly mistakes in away trips to Luton, Newcastle and Chelsea in 2023, but there was no looking back once he found his way.
Since his debut, he has stopped 93 per cent of the crosses he has faced in all competitions.
That quality came to the fore in the opening game of this season. While Manchester United’s Altay Bayindir (6ft 6in) was left flapping at a Declan Rice corner as Riccardo Calafiori nodded home, Raya easily dealt with similar issues later in the game, catching one delivery and punching the other well away from danger.
When asked about Raya’s confidence in these situations, Arteta said: “David is very big here (pointing to his head) and he’s very brave. You cannot be the tallest, but you have the will and the courage to go for this kind of balls. That’s a massive attribute.
“And then, he’s a super athlete. He’s someone really athletic: really powerful, really dynamic, really agile. That’s a big advantage because he can time things really well and on that action (Raya punching away a cross under pressure from United’s Matthijs de Ligt) especially, when there are so many bodies in the box, to come out and do that, it shows his courage and personality, and his capacity to deal with these situations.”
Raya made his Arsenal debut against Everton in September 2023 (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
That courage is most evident in how Raya plays when Arsenal are in possession. It might be hard to remember for some fans, but Raya’s third start for Arsenal was one of the most anxiety-inducing performances the Emirates has seen in recent history. It was a 1-0 win against Manchester City, but the amount of time the Spaniard spent on the ball before passing made thousands of people hold their breath at once.
He has not been as extreme with the length of time he spends on the ball since but those who watch Arsenal are now much more accustomed to seeing him play short or even hold a position between his penalty area and the halfway line. Over time, his distribution has balanced out nicely, though.
From goal kicks, he tends to go longer more often than short now, with a preference to the right side of the pitch (possibly with Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka as targets).
He goes much shorter in open play, but those long passes are not always with his feet. A major asset of Raya’s is when he claims a cross and distributes the ball to an attacker with quick throws. Raya is well and truly acting as the first attacker in Arteta’s team.
With every game that passes, however, it is Raya’s more traditional goalkeeping qualities that stand out the most. Against Forest, it was his finger-tip save that made sure the ball didn’t go in off Chris Wood’s chest, while the only goal he has conceded this season was Dominik Szoboszlai’s inch-perfect free kick against Liverpool at Anfield.
He may not be the busiest goalkeeper, but he can stay in tune with the game to make saves that have made a real difference to Arsenal.
“I know this country and I know what I was doing,” Arteta said when looking back on the decision to sign Raya. “I understand the context very well of where I am.
“If he (Ramsdale) were a player from Serbia, we would have had a different conversation for sure, but he was someone that was very much loved, a very special character and an England international. That has a lot of ingredients to become a big debate.
“But I knew that (Raya) had the courage to deal with that situation. It’s not easy when you come to a big club. It was a big step for him, but we believed that he was the right goalkeeper as well to give us something else and he was part of evolving as a team.”
One of Arsenal’s most consistent performers for the past 18 months, Arteta will hope that continues for the next nine or so. If the start of the season is anything to go by, that should be the case.
(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)